Reentry

TEDx Talk on Prisons as a LAST RESORT

Grace Marie Hamilton has taught me so very much, both through the extensive interviews with her that went into writing “Grace Goes to Prison”, and in the years since the book’s publication, as she has become both my mentor and teacher. Grace Marie has a number of “sayings” that she’s shared with me. One of them is:

“Prisons should be used ONLY for the people we don’t yet know how to help.”

I recently had the honor of being one of the speakers at a TEDx event, and I used what Grace Marie taught me to craft a talk around the radical suggestion that our prisons should be used only as an option of last resort. Here it is: